a careful wish

I wished on a light that flew through the night sky, and relished in its beauty as it reached my naked eye.

Rare and profound and sprouting at the edges, sweet and surreal, but it used up all the leverage it had against my heart and threw it right back. The light heard me loud and couldn’t help but laugh.

I was sick, feeling weak, by a hope-fuelled disease. Turning inside out until I couldn’t breathe

at the sight of you smiling, laughing alone, the silhouette of your shadow as it asked for something more.

Why quiet a shadow? While it follows where you go, distorted and dark, tied to your very soul. I stood in it for long. For long, it felt like home, while I waited for your back to take on another form: your face unhidden, your arms all alone, your heart, that something I’d never felt before.

Your mind in sprouting, I’d tend to every seed, fostered by my loving, with every part of me. By choice, I'd nourish, replenish, break it free, the itty, bitty parts that’ve browned like autumn leaves.

Rebuild all the breaking, draw out all the weak. Strengthen the will that’s had me on my knees searching through the dirt for an old man’s trash. Waiting for the treasure to make up where I lack.

Lest I sparkle as bright as the wish that flew by, disappear with the night and never think twice.

Wherever my shadow casts, or whoever it reaches for,

My wish was but a wish, a wish and nothing more.

Dreams for my sleep, and I’m sleeping hell-bent,

on a wish that’s worth chasing

right towards a lonesome end.